Bear Witness

Writers are scrambling to capture and transform opportunities as they arise for developing Sarah Palin’s Star Trek role.  She provides them every day with new fodder and storylines that enhance a brilliantly conceived new series, and new direction, for the Star Trek franchise.  

Because of my writer contacts with the new series, I get leaks now and again and this is straight from the writer’s War Room (as they call it).  The first scripts for Star Trek: Reckoning, the new Star Trek series coming from Fox/Paramount this Fall, feature Captain Nalia Fergus (Sarah Palin) of the USS Steadfast, and a CGI-created polar bear first officer, Commander Nuuk.  As I’ve mentioned in a previous blogpost, the polar bear doesn’t realize that Fergus used to hunt bears like him for sport.  

I’m not allowed to put any of the script online for copyright reasons, but the episode entitled “Ain’t No Love for Mama Grizzlies” has the Steadfast‘s Captain and First Officer in a holodeck hunt of each other, and both of them have guns!  I kid you not.  

Here’s the breakdown.  Fergus, in a bid to coerce women of the Federation to rise up and reject the Betazed President of the Federation, and his stubbornly peaceful policies, has issued a statement, using the image of her first officer, Nuuk, as an example of the kind of “bear” she is, the kind of “mama grizzly” she believes all conservative women are.  

When Nuuk receives a message from enemies of Fergus–pictures of her with the skins of bears, hunting bears, when the facts start rolling in about how she really feels about bears–the Truth about Fergus’ relationship to Grizzlies, bears and other wildlife: she’d originally been part of a group that wanted to offer hunts, and drill for oil, on Nuuk’s own planet–for her own profit!–completely against the Federation’s Planetary Protection Act on Class L planet, Arctos 3– well, let’s say he’s not pleased.  The fact that she’s using his image–an image she’d thought of more as throw rug than sentience–to promote her cause (even if it is to protect the Federation from the Reckoning) is more than he can handle, and he lures her to the Holodeck for a showdown.  

Well, you can’t shoot your captain, and you can’t shoot your first officer— just not in the Star Trek rulebook.  What Fergus doesn’t know is that Nuuk has sympathetic friends in Starfleet, and the episode hints that he may even be a counterspy on the Steadfast, working for the Federation to keep an eye on Fergus.  While he distracts Fergus on the “hunt,” information about Fergus’ real feelings and real decisions about conservative women get sent to Federation media outlets.  

Her record on supporting women before she needed them to topple the President, pretty shabby,  and those she supported didn’t support women any better,   and finally, as the truth comes out about Nalia Fergus, then some of the strongest women of the Federation start speaking out against her.  It’s really shocking how pliant, gullible and weak she thinks women are.  That if she just projects an image of women rising up and supporting her–because she called out their name and flattered them–that they will create that uprising themselves, and forget all the ways she’s actually denigrated women.  (I’m really hoping that they bring back Captain Janeway to speak for Emily’s List–now there was a great female captain!)

This all happens during the Holodeck hunt–to keep Fergus from defending herself and allow the word to get out.  Unfortunately, giving away the ending of the episode–SPOILER–Nuuk is tranquilized, and put in the brig for several episodes.  But, this episode ends with the truth coming out, at least in a small way about Nalia Fergus and her movement.  Writers tell me this is episode 4 or 5 of the series.  

What I find so fascinating about Fergus’ character is her distorted belief in herself as saviour–and yet, I can’t help but believe that there’s a grab for power in there somewhere too.  That it’s very little about saving the Federation, and more about using the Reckoning–this dream of disaster–as a way to wrench power and control away from the Federation through fear.  Such a master at projection, Nalia Fergus may actually bring on the very Reckoning she claims to be saving the Federation from.  

Writers praise Palin:  “As a writer on the show, I can’t say how much I’m thankful for Sarah Palin’s assistance in helping us flesh out this character.  Every day, we’re all watching her Twitter, and reading every statement she puts out.  We sit around the War Room and translate that–nearly verbatim–into a Star Trek episode.  She’s a gift to the series.”  

I find this show completely fascinating—and it hasn’t even been broadcast!   Who’da thought that a conservative take on Star Trek would provide so many compelling storylines?  

— on a different note, the start date for the series has been moved back to October because of Sarah Palin speaking engagements piling up this summer.  She’s still filming when she can, I’ve heard, but she’s a woman on the move, a “pink elephant” parading* across the stages she’s set in America, and the Series just has to wait her out.  

Oddly, Palin’s conjuring up women as “pink elephants” refers back to the drunken stupor that Dumbo experiences in the Disney movie, “Dumbo”–is she saying that women marching on Washington is an alcohol-induced halucination?   Hmmm.  Well, in honor of Palin’s reference to “pink elephants”  I give you the original song that was, frankly, frightening for kids back when Dumbo showed in theatres.  

As previously noted, this is a parody.